


repetition

by daisuga



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi with OCD, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisuga/pseuds/daisuga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something about the way he smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	repetition

**Author's Note:**

> (Listen to OCD by Neil Hilborn. Poetry slams inspire me so much, I am trash.)
> 
> unbeta'd and I am writing this in the afterlife

There's something about about the way he smiles, softly, lips curving like his sister's hairpin, rough at the edges but smooth and comforting.

His whole being makes Akaashi twitchy--Bokuto Koutarou is a cluttery apartment at two in the morning with coffee in the air and enough books to last a life time. A comfort, yet a hazard. The first time he saw him, his mind came to a stop, in a way similar to a car screeching to a sudden break when it was running on 120 km/h. It's like magic, how all his thoughts immediately froze, how all the counting vanished and all that's left is a trap door that won't open. _There's an eyelash on his cheek_ , he thought, then, muscles constricting and nerve cells frantically sending messages to the brain. _An eyelash on his cheek._

His name echoed in Akaashi's mind, only saying it outloud for two times, and he bit his tongue to stop himself from saying it one more time, because he says names by three's and says his by one and--

Bokuto smiled, and there's nothing reminiscent of a hairpin curve about it, because it's all teeth, mouth like the perfect bow Odysseus strung when he came back, and Akaashi wanted to run his hands across the tiny flecks of freckles on his nose, once, twice, and then one more, maybe to count it, turning around his mind the thought of it being caused by sun exposure, or maybe it was strong genetics, and he thought, _how beautiful._

In hindsight, it should've been clear; He should've seen it clearly, like the six-striped volleyball and the fifty-seven droplets (seventy when they got off) on his father's windshield. He should've caught it all.

There's something akin to fear that spread itself out in the pit of his stomach, something like denial and refusal to believe it, because Bokuto is not like the cracks on the sidewalks, not like the water tap at home (Did he close it? Did he close it? _Did he close it?_ ) or the light switch or the times he dribbles a ball before setting. When he develops a habit, it usually eats him up, slowly but surely, persistent voice calling out in his head, asking _How many? Did you?_

( _An obsession_ , a voice in his mind offered, loathing and disappointed, something that sounds like his mother.)

Bokuto held his hand, strong grip, calloused hand, and Akaashi unconsciously counted the hard bumps he could feel but not the seconds spent by their hands, feeling a scratchy thing in his throat that tasted familiarly like a stuttering of an " _I-I-I-I love you._ "

 

 

* * *

 

Kissing him is like kissing a sunset, like kissing a tsunami out of a boy, Akaashi’s fingers ghosting over his broad back, tapping once, thrice. He murmurs the number of freckles that he finds on Bokuto’s shoulders, faded but still there.

There is something satisfying with loving someone for 15,891 hours.

 _It’s endearing_ , Bokuto says. OCD never calmed Akaashi down, never left him alone--he had long since learned how to stop himself from stalling when they are on sidewalks, had long since learned that there are things that’s not made to be counted, but that also means that there are things that are made to be, things that get under his skin like germs.

But Bokuto is a new thing entirely; Akaashi stalls at the way his joints move, at the number of beauty marks there are on his back, repeats the things he says over and over in his mind, repeats the things he wants to say back alone outloud. There’s something mesmerizing about him and the way he smiles, upturned lips, tiny dimple forming on the edge of his mouth, only noticeable when you look close and hard and long enough, _I love you, I love you._

There’s a flashback, of him growing up with his mom, flicking the light switch on and off and on and off and closing the doors and opening it then closing it again before climbing on his bed, his mom watching him with a sparkle in her eyes, a sparkle in her eyes, _a sparkle in her eyes_ that makes Akaashi dreams of constellations and how vast the universe is.

 

 He does not think of how he watched that sparkle in her eyes slowly fade.

 He does not think of the empty house and the note and the tears on the paper, one, three, five, _goodbye_.  
 

* * *

 

He is a daily reminder of why we don’t settle for a love that hurts.

 

He is a boy who grew up with things slipping out of his hands: coffee mugs, glasses, pens, words, time, his mother. _Nothing is forever_ , her mother said, lips twisted into a curl that should be a smile, but it’s not a smile, because Akaashi saw more than five hundred smiles and smiles are soft and happy and blinding, not bitter and sad and abandoned.She left the country when he was ten, with nothing but a goodbye note of an “I found a job, goodbye” and yearly calls and nothing else. His mother said she’s tired of the country, but he believes it’s because of him. Her son. _Not normal._

Lessons are learned and people cry a lot of times in the bathroom and Akaashi now knows that it’s not normal, it’s not really normal; He knows that normal people don’t wash their hands eighteen times, don’t count the cracks on the sidewalks, don’t kiss their lovers goodbye fifteen times (and twenty when it’s on Wednesdays.)

 _It’s endearing,_ Bokuto repeats, holding him close, 3 inches, 0.076 metres, and Akaashi thinks about his arm and his shoulders and how he is burning as bright as the Sun, and nothing else, and he’s thankful for it, but the feeling of being crushed by forty cars and being rained over by a million drops doesn’t go away, not entirely, not really.

This is a thesis, a theory, a thought and a fact that Bokuto is a something he could hold on, something lie a lifeline. A reminder that he’s not a harm to anyone, not even to himself. A reminder that it’s okay, like how he’s a reminder that things are not there forever.

 

“I love you,” Bokuto says, comforting and heavy, but not the bad kind. Heavy, but not the heavy that pushes him down. “I love you.”

 When Bokuto repeated it the third time, Akaashi could breathe again.

 

* * *

 

There’s something about his smiles, like he’s a boy that has been kissed by the Sun, like he’s a boy that possesses a hand like God’s.

Sometimes love means swallowing everything and sometimes love means forgetting and sometimes love means letting old wounds heal and sometimes love means sleeping in and sometimes love is counting the syllables of their names and comparing it to your heartbeat.

 

Sometimes love means becoming better.

And he so, so wanted to be better.

 

* * *

 

“So how are you?”

His mother called in December and Akaashi held the receiver near his mouth, hands leaving the light switch, _seventeen, eighteen._

“I’m fine.”

“And about the…” His mother paused, and he climbed on his bed, shutting down his urge to check the door lock again. “About your condition. Everything okay? Things good?”

Akaashi let his eyes flutter close for a minute, before opening them, hands holding Bokuto’s, the other’s arm suddenly draped over his lap. His fingers touch the joints, _one, two, three,_ then the knuckles, _one, two, three, four, five_ , then looked over Bokuto’s face, unceremonious and very definition of ungraceful, but he’s glowing and he’s warm and--

 

_You’re the first beautiful thing I got stuck on._

 

“Everything’s okay,” Akaashi breathe out, soft and endearing and sentimental.

 

“All's good.” 


End file.
